Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 61 posts

Re: I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner

#51

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Aurornis wrote: post #47

Interesting that this Tweet is trending on HN, because it’s rather empty of actual details. There have been a lot of more thoughtful analyses of the scanner circulating on Twitter that have actually highlighted the real problems with what they’re claiming. An example of an important point brought up by someone with actual domain expertise is to point out that ultrasound doesn’t travel well through bone or air. Once y…

Another thing that had me sort of scratching my head about this tweet were these sections (emphasis mine):

> If the Midjourney ultrasound is high resolution, harmless, inexpensive and convenient, people can get an initial scan...

> If the MIdjourney device can be repeated frequently, like weekly, at a low cost and is harmless..

This particular author is backtracking on his original idea that lots of frequent scans are bad, as long as they are cheap and accurate. But that's a pretty irrelevant side issue IMO when the vast majority of objections I've seen to Midjourney's announcement have been that qualified folks just don't believe the tech is medically feasible - it won't have the necessary resolution to discriminate findings.

I'm not faulting the author, who was quite clear where he did a rethink, but I do fault people who somehow think this is evidence that Midjourney's scanner will be viable.

TBH, while I don't think the Midjourney announcement is the same level of malevolence as Theranos, I don't think it was quite far off. I'm baffled that people think science and medicine should be done by a flashy website and PR-speak instead of the sober language of research reports, but I guess that's just a (sad, IMO) sign of the times.

Re: I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner

#52

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

notatoad wrote: post #36
madrox wrote: post #28

I wonder how much of the knee-jerk cynicism comes down to it being Midjourney doing this in a way where it feels like "practicing medicine without a license." The irony is I believe that if a medical devices company announced this, it was being sold to hospitals, and it would only cost the patient's insurance $100 a scan, then the medical industry would universally praise this as a breakthrough. It is very easy to be…

>The irony is I believe that if a medical devices company announced this, it was being sold to hospitals, and it would only cost the patient's insurance $100 a scan, then the medical industry would universally praise this as a breakthrough. yes, that's the power of reputation. if a company with a proven track record of selling effective diagnostic tools decided to stake their reputation on a new system that sounds a…

> yes, that's the power of reputation.

No, it's not just about reputation, at least for me it's about the fact that there is a relatively strict, FDA-approval process for actual medical devices. Midjourney's announcement was the equivalent of a marketing page for some supplement that claims it will make be sleep great while growing my penis (the page even basically even marketed it as a "wellness" product), not actual scientific evidence that the device would, or could, work as advertised.

Re: I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner

#53

Post by fastball »

jgon wrote: post #50
fastball wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a pretty wild disparagement this early. A Theranos situation is one where fraud has been committed . Theranos itself would not have been a "Theranos situation" if, after making initial bold claims ("we're gonna do a full blood panel with a drop of your blood"), they had tried to make it work, failed, and then been upfront about that. But they committed fraud and the rest is history. With regards to Midjourney…

Right, but also a big part of the "Theranos situation" was a tech company coming out and saying "We've got this revolutionary medical technology that the multi-hundred billion dollar medical industry has overlooked but which a non-domain expert undergrad has been able to innovate", and then a bunch of people, crucially many people with domain experience said stuff like "this is likely fraud, testing companies have al…

There are very clearly capabilities in medical tech that have not been fully explored due to compute/cost constraints and gaps in innovation. "Really smart PhDs have worked on this and come up with nothing" is a very unconvincing argument – you could say that about huge swathes of technological development.

Very smart people were trying and failing to effectively split the atom before some very well-funded and well-placed individuals made it happen. Loads of very smart people were working on AI before Transformers were developed and made LLMs viable / intelligent enough for real work. People trying and failing to do something hard doesn't mean it is impossible, it just means they've found 10,000 ways to not make a lightbulb.

Re: I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner

#54

Post by nl »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #43
nl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like the post, say something about the post itself. At the moment your criticism sounds like "I don't like this world we live in"

It takes ten times longer to point out all of the things wrong with an LLM-generated post than it does to generate it. This is a losing battle and a miserable way to spend one's time. It would be preferable to simply not see zero-effort generated content drowning out real content, but because the zero-effort generated content outnumbers real content 100:1, it requires a high degree of active moderation intervention t…

I think AI slop posts should be downvoted. I've flagged some myself.

This post didn't seem particularly AI generated to me (and notable even the OP didn't claim it was - just that they are "also prompting chat to write his posts").

It reads as someone with a moderately qualified opinion changing their mind on something and giving reasonable reasons.

The OP complaining that they "are an AI booster" and that they use AI seemed to be non-specific points rather than anything they didn't like about this post.

Re: I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner

#56

Post by noobermin »

nl wrote: post #54
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes ten times longer to point out all of the things wrong with an LLM-generated post than it does to generate it. This is a losing battle and a miserable way to spend one's time. It would be preferable to simply not see zero-effort generated content drowning out real content, but because the zero-effort generated content outnumbers real content 100:1, it requires a high degree of active moderation intervention t…

I think AI slop posts should be downvoted. I've flagged some myself. This post didn't seem particularly AI generated to me (and notable even the OP didn't claim it was - just that they are "also prompting chat to write his posts"). It reads as someone with a moderately qualified opinion changing their mind on something and giving reasonable reasons. The OP complaining that they "are an AI booster" and that they use A…

The top comment right now is essentially explaining my issue here. My problem isn't really the pro or anti stance, this is a booster account that is farming off of the engagement. This has been a thing since musk introduced paid premium blue checks on twitter, essentially these circles of accounts that just puff each other up with AI generated posts and replies now proliferate widely. You see similar accounts like gimmick accounts, accounts that post gender war or political content, age gap discourse, whatever is currently trending or spicy in order to get engagement and thus get that small cut of premium payment for said posts. Of course, in order to get a big enough return, they use scale, and thus LLM replies and multiple accounts. The AI enthusiast circle on twitter have a similar inauthentic accounts. It wouldn't be surprising if this is just one of the person's profiles.

The thing is these are more likely than not not sincere posts but are probably bots accounts used to get some skimming amount of money from the generated content. I'd rather read actually interesting details, not the "template engagement bait" (as the top comment) posted so we can debate that instead of this contentless generated post.

Re: I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner

#57

Post by pu_pe »

The fact this Midjourney delusional device is taken even slightly seriously is a major sign that we are in a bubble. A lot of people are pointing to Anthropic and OpenAI's investments into datacenters as problematic, but I think it's this ancillary scam ecosystem of things that truly don't have any intrinsic value that's much more dangerous.

Re: I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner

#58

Post by mchusma »

For those not following the debate of X, there have been a surge of doctors who are saying that full body scans are net negative.

The argument is that current full body scans often have false positives, and our treatment of false positives is bad including risky biopsies. Some have gone so far as to literally state early detection does not lead to better outcomes (simply not true - genuine early detection is very helpful but what they mean is it is outweighed at the population level by false positives).

The counter argument is that more information is always good but that you must learn to handle the noise, and we should focus on improving how we handle false positives. Including, but not limited to more frequent and abundant scans of various types.

The reason this is trending is because it both includes the argument and feels nice that someone changes their mind.

Personally, I think a lot of the issues here come down to the fact that we lie about the statistics instead of just show them. A test is neither positive or negative. It’s x% updated probability that you have something.

Re: I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner

#59

Post by senordevnyc »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #51
Aurornis wrote: post #47

Interesting that this Tweet is trending on HN, because it’s rather empty of actual details. There have been a lot of more thoughtful analyses of the scanner circulating on Twitter that have actually highlighted the real problems with what they’re claiming. An example of an important point brought up by someone with actual domain expertise is to point out that ultrasound doesn’t travel well through bone or air. Once y…

Another thing that had me sort of scratching my head about this tweet were these sections (emphasis mine): > If the Midjourney ultrasound is high resolution, harmless, inexpensive and convenient, people can get an initial scan... > If the MIdjourney device can be repeated frequently, like weekly, at a low cost and is harmless.. This particular author is backtracking on his original idea that lots of frequent scans ar…

the vast majority of objections I've seen to Midjourney's announcement have been that qualified folks just don't believe the tech is medically feasible

The original Midjourney Medical thread here on HN was loaded with people confidently declaring that these kinds of scans are a bad idea and net negative because of the risk of false positives.

Re: I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner

#60

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

senordevnyc wrote: post #59
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing that had me sort of scratching my head about this tweet were these sections (emphasis mine): > If the Midjourney ultrasound is high resolution, harmless, inexpensive and convenient, people can get an initial scan... > If the MIdjourney device can be repeated frequently, like weekly, at a low cost and is harmless.. This particular author is backtracking on his original idea that lots of frequent scans ar…

the vast majority of objections I've seen to Midjourney's announcement have been that qualified folks just don't believe the tech is medically feasible The original Midjourney Medical thread here on HN was loaded with people confidently declaring that these kinds of scans are a bad idea and net negative because of the risk of false positives.

> The original Midjourney Medical thread here on HN was loaded with people confidently declaring that these kinds of scans are a bad idea and net negative because of the risk of false positives.

Conditional on low base rates, and the need for invasive follow-up testing, they are likely to cause more problems than they solve.

But personally, I love all this stuff and have an emotional belief that more data is always better, which is weird in cases like this where it turns out that's not the case.

Post reply on HN